Abstract
Agile accelerates software development by promoting seamless collaboration between cross-functional development teams and the client. This helps in eliminating the many ills of traditional project management methodologies, including but not limited to, high development costs, rigidity, complexities in management, and the lack of transparency. This PoV discusses 'DONE-Release at Will', a proprietary robust framework, which is meant to assess the maturity of an organization's Agile initiatives and keeping them at their peak. It effectively improves business agility by promising speed of delivery, ability to scale rapidly, and certainty in delivery frequency and quality, thus leading to 'Release at Will.'
The fast-evolving business and technology landscape calls for rapid and continuous transformation of the technology underpinnings and business differentiation—that too on time and budget. This stems from the need for differentiation as a driver of business value, risk reduction, and RoI. But since differentiation is only short-term, companies are scouting for vendors who can reduce time-to-market and act as transformation enablers and catalysts.
Achieving this with traditional methodologies such as Waterfall Model is an uphill task. This is where Agile comes to the rescue, accelerating software development by promoting seamless collaboration between cross-functional development teams and the client.
The reason for Agile’s popularity is simple: the collaborative and iterative nature of Agile development eliminates the many ills of traditional project management methodologies, including but not limited to, high development costs, rigidity, complexities in management, and the lack of transparency. In fact, Agile emphasizes individual and interactions, working solutions, customer collaboration, and flexibility over processes and tools, documentation, contract negotiation, and set plans.
True business agility requires transformation across Architecture (e.g. microservices), Process (e.g. Lean, Kanban, feature-based delivery), Automation (e.g. CI/CD, Continuous Deployment, test case selfgeneration and self-healing), People and Culture (e.g. combined engineering model), Infrastructure (e.g. cloud adoption), and Innovation (e.g. new ideas).
Riding the Agile Wave
With more than 3,000 developers, Coforge is among the fastest growing Agile specialists, with a focus on travel and transportation, banking, and insurance verticals.
Fine-tuning the focus is Coforge 'DONE-Release at Will', a robust framework that assesses the maturity of Agile initiatives and keeps them at their peak. The framework improves business agility by promising speed of delivery, ability to scale rapidly, and certainty in delivery frequency and quality, thus leading to ‘Release at Will’.
The Coforge Way: DONE-Release At Will
'DONE-Release at Will' framework brings together 23 capabilities across Architecture, Process, Automation, People & Culture and Infrastructure.
Through an interplay of these capabilities, the 'DONE-Release at Will' focuses on:
- How the initiative or project can enhance business value;
- How agile practices can be leveraged to shorten delivery cycle and reduce costs;
- How support and operations can be kept lean and aligned with business objectives;
- How solution architecture can aid in lowering cost of ownership and improving time-to-market;
- How continuous delivery can ensure 'Release at Will.'
Why DONE-Release At Will
Among the noteworthy benefits, this DONE framework offers improved responses to business context for better alignment and leverages tangible business benefits by adopting agile initiatives. It also future-proofs architecture through microservices transformation and enables delivery of production-ready code through Combined Engineering.
A Leader in Agile
Not surprisingly, Coforge has been adjudged a ‘leader’ in The Forrester Wave™: Midsize Agile Software Development Service Providers, Q2 2019.
The Forrester report evaluated 13 agile software-development service providers across 22 criteria, grouped into three high-level categories. Coforge received 5 on 5 in the agile services engagement and commercial models criterion, and among the top two highest scores in Agile co-innovation, tools, platforms, and business strategy criteria.
The report acknowledges Coforge’ various examples that combine migration of legacy architectures to microservices that led to quantifiable improvements to customer-facing software, and states that Coforge is a good choice for Application Development & Delivery leaders in its target industries, whether they are new to Agile or experienced with it.
About the Author
Harish Nanda is Chief Architect at Coforge. He is Architecture & Technology leader with more than 25 years of experience across wide spectrum of technologies including Blockchain, Microsoft Technologies, Micro Services, Cloud, DevOps and Automation. Harish specializes in providing Architecture & Technology Consulting, defining & executing organization’s technology roadmap and mentoring budding architects.
